Well some people think if they get rid of the cult then Bitcoin will be a more "inclusive" place.

Actually it will just become a polarized currency because there will always be people out there who hate liberals, they consider inclusiveness as a liberal trait so Bitcoin development will end up being caught in the crossfire of US politics like CashApp and Venmo.

Media does not have any reason to feel threatened by Bitcoin, it's the people who own those publications who have a stake in various financial institutions, who feel that their personal interests are threatened by its rise. Nothing they can do about it though, except for spreading misinformation in their media outlets.

Bitcoin community is not a cult and that's why it is called a community whereby all affairs partaining bitcoin could be discussed, but in so doing we can have a subgroup spearheaded by some reputable members on individuals discretion, it's a choice and not officially except for the executive memebers of the forum which we don't also know or have interest to how how they meet or discuss, but the large community here is big enough to make every possible discoveries one could ever thought about as a gathering, but irrespective of what others may say about the community, it standard never get compromised to that of an occultic group, this is purely and strictly bitcoin community.

Reading the topic of this discussion OP, I had to go check out the typical characteristics of a cult group, so I can on my own compare it with the characteristics of this community to see if there is a similarity. These are some of the characteristics I could find;
source

Now comparing those characteristics;
Can we say this is Satoshi?

I don't think there is any strong rule that you must bring people to the forum.

We love money yes, but it is not the primary purpose of this forum, I believe the primary objective here is for knowledge and not money.

Almost all sorts of questions and enquiries to know more are entertained on this forum, we are all here to learn.

The forum is a free place, you decide the time you want to be active.

Privacy is key, and even though we are in the same forum, it is still often advised that you still exercise caution with other members.

In conclusion, there is a reason why there is the word ''community'' and the word ''cult''. IMO while they may share some similarities, the two word do not exactly refer to the same thing. Cult is the extreme of a community.

Maybe he's pointing out with market movement wherein 'unity' is evident with the investors which is simply normal. Everyone wants profit from their investment which makes the tendency high for investors to move as one based on the market behavior. Perhaps there is a price increase, most of the investors will avoid selling early not because they planned it, but simply because they are all eyeing to a bigger profit. Also, in something which is controlled by demand, the best way to survive or to benefit from it is to move or go with the flow of the majority because quantity is the bottomline. Try moving on the opposite, I doubt if it would give you a better outcome.

Bitcoin is not a cult, it's simply ignored by "governments" and "financial institutes" because they fear the end of their era. Imagine world without fiat money, peeps would built in the chips into their hands and just swipe here and there, everyone would just want to have more and more bitcoin so that they can get the services or products they want without any middle party or bank etc.

Ever seen star trek or Doctor Who? Sometimes I feel like bitcoin was pulled straight out of those scifi movies and series.

It looks like cult because its new technology (relatively) and due to non ending hindrances peeps are unable to utilize it's full specs.

Well, the "cult" isn't exactly what the mainstream media describes us. It's also how we show up at conferences worshipping certain individuals (in the past, Andreas Antonopoulos and more recently Michael Saylor), buying the same "Don't trust, verify" merchandise (even if we are not technically competent enough to verify our own code), reading the same books ("The Bitcoin Standard" is in the bookshelf of pretty much every bitcoiner on Twitter) and posting pictures of the same devices (it used to be the Trezor, now the Coldcard is the cool maximalist device). There are community members who spend every day telling their friends and social media followers that everything will be divided by 21 million (the BTC supply) and that Bitcoin is "element zero" in chemistry.

There are many nuances, and it seems that every adoption cycle brings in people who are more willing to follow a narrative than to approach Bitcoin critically. You should spend a day reading what's going on in the community chats of Samourai wallet or Coldcard users. I'm convinced that these are bona fide "micro cults". And I get it, I know why this is happening. But this doesn't mean that we should indulge in the shallow "Bitcoin fixes this" mindset. If you spend too much time on Bitcoin Twitter, you will feel like a cult member – as there are even gatekeepers and hound dogs (Mr. Hodl, Dieter Bob) who do nothing but police other people's speech and bully them into a uniform way of thinking. Even if it's for a good cause, I think we should reflect more on how we're actually improving the world.

That's where you're wrong, I've only been around for 2 weeks. Somehow my podcast is at season 12 and you can find articles of mine about Bitcoin which date back to mid-2017, but it's fine. Don't look too much into it, I like your portrayal better

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I find it interesting that the perception is so different here. On Twitter, there are plenty of community members who label themselves as "toxic maximalists", "fundamentalists", "Bitcoin crusaders", "Bitcoin extremists". They will say that anything that is not Bitcoin is a scam, they will argue that even tokens built on top of Bitcoin (Counterparty, Omni, Stacks, RGB, Taro) are scams and there is even a crowd which believes that the Lightning Network is a failure which is not really Bitcoin.

What I find most amusing is that Blocsktream tried to offer all the "scammy" features on the Liquid sidechain. And after they spent time calling out tokens for being scams, now their sidechain mostly mines empty blocks because users don't really want to be associated with these scams. That's what you get when there's no nuance and the scam is the tool itself, which is not relative to a network or protocol. Anyway, I got sidetracked a bit. My point is that the responses I got here are visibly different from those I got on Twitter.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

Nobody should be engaging media without proof that the media in question is honest.  =>

Talking points such as these are why smart people don't engage you.

You can argue that I'm debating in bad faith and be as subtle as you want in terms of implying that I'm too dumb to deserve replies to the inquiry.

But let me ask you this: did you watch/attend any of the Miami conferences? Or the one that's currently taking place in Amsterdam?

I won't make any assumptions, but I'll leave a few samples here. Before you consider using "these guys are in a minority" argument, I'll remind you that these conferences have more attendees than BitcoinTalk forum accounts and the amount of followers that the talking heads have should also be taken into consideration.

Max Keiser's "fuck Elon" moment: https://youtu.be/GC_h_tz44uw

Michael Saylor telling sovereign individuals what they should do with their own money: https://youtu.be/8ZcFahsvFyI

Saifedean explaining to Jordan Peterson that Bitcoin is "digital energy" (this became a popular meme): https://youtu.be/iJ85fyWx-Ck


I could probably dig up more stuff about Bitcoin being a "battery", "digital real estate", "element zero", "digital alchemy", and all sorts of silly metaphors. But the concerning part is that people take them seriously.